Farthest to the Side
by Thaumh
Summary: Tenth Doctor gets yanked off course and arrives quite by accident on a world that appears no more advanced than 10th Century Earth, in a part of the Universe that records show has no habitable planets. Then the TARDIS vanishes. What's a Time Lord to do? At least the new companion seems quick on the uptake. :-/
1. Chapter 1

**STANDARD DISCLAIMER**

I do not own the copyrights to Doctor Who or any of the related characters, concepts, or pseudo-technologies mentioned. They are the sole property of the BBC and all incumbent writers, production companies and wot-not. The world of Thraea and all related characters, races, concepts and other intellectual property are exclusively mine, used with my own permission.

Dragons Angels, and Demons seem to be fairly open source...

This story starts off where the last moments of Doomsday ends. In the TV show, the TARDIS gets hit by the Titanic. My story goes someplace else.

Author's Note

Thraea lexicon: turning = hour; stride = one meter distance; man = 1.5 meters height

cododd tree = rose 'bush' that can grow as big as an English Oak; mamth = shaggy 'Jacob Sheep' big as a rhino

The images of Rose standing on the beach of a parallel Universe faded from view, leaving the Doctor feeling as desolate as that shore line had looked. He wouldn't cry. He usually didn't over a silly little permanent goodbye like that. The Universe knew he'd had a few. Even so, the moment had been as hearts wrenching for him as it must have been for Rose.

Listlessly, he orbited the console, flipping random switches carelessly and adjusting crucial knobs precisely. He had absolutely no clue when or where he should go next. Perhaps back to Satellite 5? Maybe he could find a worthy companion there, perhaps a decade before he first showed up with Rose to deal with the Jagrafess.

Rose.

No, not Satellite 5 then. It was a silly place, and for him, she was still there. Like the Vorlons say, 'We have *always* been here.' What, then?

He was about to have the notion to leave the TARDIS to her own devices for a while and go find a workshop somewhere on board and build a new K-9. That idea never fully manifested, however, and the TARDIS suddenly gave a mighty lurch to the upper-middle North-East Widdershins, and swiftly down stream as linear minded chrono-perceptions went, and a little to the left. The doctor hung on for dear life, and managed to catch a view of a read out monitor. The technobabble scrolling across the screen amounted to, "I'm not doing this! No, really! I picked up a distress call, and when it noticed that I'd noticed, _it_ started pulling _me_!" His one hand holding a death grip on a support handle, the other flew across a key pad asking, "So, what _is_ our heading?" After an eternal seeming moment, the reply came back, "You will know as soon as I do."

A few moments later, moments that may have been seconds but could have been hours, the engines cut out. In fact, the TARDIS seemed to completely lose power, for a moment. It flicked on and off once, then came back strong as ever. In that moment the Doctor floated off the floor in zero-g, his stomach lurching the the loss of up-down-ness. He knew they were in an atmosphere from the wind whistling around the corners of the Police Box façade. When the power returned, his knees hit the deck, and the screen announced, "Brace for impact!"

"This year's Winter was not as harsh as last," Tlisen mused to himself aloud as he sat on the driver's bench of his cart. He spoke to his shaggy mamth pulling the cart as much as to himself. He had spent the Winter Solstice holiday with his brother in town, now he was headed back to his farmstead, alone. He wore only his boots and trousers, an under shirt, a cardigan, his leather wide brim hat and long coat, and a blanket wrapping his legs. His ruddy blond hair fell lank on either side of his swarthy face and steel blue tired looking eyes. A short beard graced his chin.

The previous Winter however, as he'd stated, had been particularly harsh. Every ten to fifteen years or so, Ol' Man Gaéaf got a burr up his butt and pounded the land with snows to the eaves and cold enough to freeze a Dragon's gizzard. The Flu Plague had an eleven year cycle. When the two aligned, as happened last year, everyone suffered. Tlisen lost his wife and their new born son.

The only true Healer lived in a village a dozen leagues from his. Understandably, the Magus had dealt with everyone in town first. He'd arrived at Tlisen's farm utterly exhausted after helping as many as he could in town and then trudging through the blowing snow, two turnings of the clock too late. Tlisen nursed the Healer back to health, and the Magus then helped prep the deceased mother and child for cremation. Leaving your loved ones remains laying around for some opportunistic Necromancer to mess with was highly unacceptable. They, and all others who had passed, were cremated in the potter's kiln, their collected ashes scattered to the fields the following Spring.

Now it was just Tlisen, and Peludo the mamth, and some chickens, and Garth the dog and Miss Schlau the cat, and Shadeaux the black fox who had a den somewhere in the woods surrounding the farmstead. Otherwise, Tlisen was alone. He continued to babble the trivia of the moment to the very large shaggy ungulate who dutifully pulled the rather large farm cart towards home. The only other sounds as they travelled the ancient highway were the creaking and rumbling of the cart, the clopping of Peludo's hoofs on the cobbles, and the muffled white noise of the night breeze through the snow dusted forest. When Tlisen ran out of things to say, he began quasi-singing semi-humming a Solstice tune.

The night is cold, the snow is new. Mother loves the winter and I do too.

The highway of the ancients was paved with some kind of alabaster. It was so old, Tlisen's great grand father claimed that when he was a boy he'd met a very old and well mannered Vampirae, and she _had_ claimed that the highway was even older than her own sire. It still glistened as if it were new. It never seemed to get much dirt or leaves on it, trees and shrubs seemed incapable of growing any closer to the edge than three strides, and it had triumphantly resisted multiple attempts at harvesting stone from it for other projects. The stones shown well enough at night, even on moonless cloudy nights such as this. Plus, every fifty strides, alternating left and right, were obelisks of crystal, three men tall. The two facets facing the road were clear, while the two facing the wilderness were opaque black. At night, they shined a pale blueish-white light onto the highway. No one knew how they worked. Even if they could take one down to study it, no Magi wanted to for fear their research would turn up nothing and then they would have destroyed a very useful monument for nothing. Also, the white stones were always warm to the touch and never had snow on them. The theories of the various Magi claimed that both light from the suns and people walking on it kept it charged.

Tlisen and Peludo were nearly upon the side path which lead to the farm, marked by and iron work arched gateway sculpture of a pair of thistle stalks, the top bulbs of which were also a lanterns, currently unlit of course. Fortunately, one of the crystal obelisks was directly across the road from it. The obelisk's light flickered. Peludo kept walking, but Tlisen in the cart sat up and took notice. Those spires _**never**_ flickered or wavered. The light flickered again. He could see the next three or four up the road, and they were acting normally. None of this seemed to bother Peludo, who was automatically turning towards their gate, when the road lamp went out completely. This the mamth did notice, and he turned his great horned head to look at the darkened crystal, but it didn't stop him. He wanted to get to his warm paddock in the barn.

A warm golden glow began to shine from the thistle shaped lamps atop the gate. Tlisen reached for the reins, but he needn't have bothered. Peludo stopped, as the snow in the gateway began to melt. They were hit with a gentle breeze of warmth, as a patch of fog began to build in the now bare spot. The fog began to glow with a golden-green light, like Summer daylight filtering through leaves, stirring the fog into languid flame-like shapes. From this arose a woman. Her skin was the ruddy glow of a youth who spends much of their time in the suns. Her hair was the color of Sequoia bark. Her eyes shown with the same light that filled the mists that surrounded Her. A toga of gauze the color of straw covered Her gravid belly and bosom. The arch of the gate was easily four men high, but Her head was a mere span short of that.

Peludo was unimpressed, and snorted his disapproval at Her standing in the way.

The apparition smiled, "Peace, good beast."

Tlisen sat on the cart, frozen. Not literally, it wasn't _that_ cold. He stared, unsure if he should stand, or bow, or genuflect, or all of the above. In the end, he found it in himself to be a little bit indignant.

"What would you have of me, Mother Thraéa," he said at last, "Your sister already came for my family a year ago."

She bowed her head slightly, and smiled a sad smile. She then gestured up at the two lamps on top of the gate, "My Mother and Father have work for you in the world."

The man looked up to see the more Southerly of the two was lit with a pale green light, lighter in hue and shade than Thraéa's, while the other shown with a pure golden light.

"Do they now," he said.

"Often enough, the reward for perseverance is more hardship," was Her reply.

Tlisen quirked an eyebrow at her, "Anything useful to say?" After a moment he added, "M'Lady?"

Her smile literally beamed at him, then Her smile faded as she lifted her face to the sky. A gust of wind whipped everyone's hair up as Her voice seemed to fill the night.

"**Prepare, for the arrival of the Oncoming Storm,**" She intoned. "**Learn to run with it, and you will go far. ****Remember, that not everything is as it first seems, and to trust your instincts on when to give trust and when not to. Know and believe, that until the day when my sister **_**does**_** come for you, never will you face your trials alone, even when you are by yourself.**"

With that, there was a silent flash of blinding golden-green light, and She was gone. All that was left of Her, was the bare patch in the snow under the gate, and the last of the mist and fog, wisping away on the vestiges of the wind. The crystal across the road flicked back on. Peludo snorted, then pulled the cart and Tlisen off the highway and onto their drive.

Tlisen numbly and automatically went through the motions of parking the cart, and putting Peludo and himself to bed. He was in shock. Not so much for the Encounter, but the knowledge that he now apparently had ahead of him some great task or two, or three dozen for all he knew. The heavenly assurance that he would have help in his tasks only vaguely alleviated the daunting feeling. Garth and Miss Schlau did their best to comfort him, but in the end he spent most of the night laying in bed staring at the dark ceiling. Not even his habitual nightcap of home made purple yam wadka seemed to help at all.

As dawn began to creep into the sky and through the window shutters, Tlisen figured he may as well get up and brew his morning chai, and get his day started. He had a notion to fire up his still and make a fresh batch of wadka. Any further thoughts were interrupted by a monumentally loud sound, like thunder heard through a long length of pipe, not that he had any right to know what that sounded like. This was followed almost immediately after with a nearly as loud, literally ground shaking thud. In a flash, he was out of bed and down from the loft, boots on his feet, short bow in hand with an arrow noched, and out the door. Cautiously he looked around, and at first didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The echoes of both booms faded to silence. A moment stretched. A Winter Jay gave a hesitant cackle. Peludo bellowed his displeasure from the barn. Tlisen listened to make sure that was just disgruntlement and not pain, then ventured forward with Garth at his side. The dog's hair on his neck and along his back was bristled into a ridge, but he knew better than to growl. Together, human and canine stepped onto the nearly bare earth, and that's what clicked in Tlisen's mind. The ground was nearly clear of snow, and it had been shin deep when he went to bed. He noted quickly that in all seemed to have been blown away in a single direction. He soon after saw that the pines spruces and cododd trees were all denuded of snow, on only one side. He looked in that direction, to find a wide column of steam rising from a spot near the edge of his field. Throwing caution to the winds, he ran forth, to find a crater in the ground. If he could walk on air, it was maybe two dozen strides across, rim to rim. As a breeze cleared the steam away a bit, he saw it was about two men deep, and in the center was perhaps the oddest thing he had ever seen.

A box. A man and half tall by one stride square. Dark blue with white trim. There was signage on it, but he didn't know the runes. A lamp on the top, slowly fading on and off.

"What do you think, Garth?" Tlisen asked.

The dog looked up at his human and wagged his tail hopefully, then turned his attention back to sniffing the dirt at the edge of the crater.

Tlisen figured the strange blue box wasn't going anywhere any time soon, and decided to mull on it over breakfast. One bowl of salt and pepper porridge, two rashers of salt pork, three eggs, and a pot of dulce chai later, he came to a decision. He dressed in his usual, but added his mother's father's old breast-and-back plate over the cardigan, his two sharpest bowie knives to his belt, and one of his most prized possessions, a quiver full of arrows with sylvan made hunting heads. Stepping outside, he saw that the amount of steam coming from the hole had lessened considerably, and there didn't seem to be any heat ripple either. He then went to the barn, noting the lack of snow on the roof and the pebbles embedded in the walls. Once inside, he gave a fresh bale of alfalfa and fennel to Peludo, then fetched his longest coil of thumb thick hemp rope. He found a fence post that hadn't been damaged by the blast, tied the rope to this, then went to the edge of the crater and began to lower himself in.

The TARDIS hummed. The Doctor lay on the floor near the console, unconscious. Not for the first time, certainly, and not for the last either if his steady breathing was any indication. He awoke slowly, for him, to a pounding headache, which he promptly ignored. He had little doubt that he'd sustained a concussion, but a Gallifreyan brain is tougher than most, and being a bona fide Time Lord had certain advantages. He ran through diagnostics with the TARDIS, and found their position was both known and unknown, and on some levels unknowable, apparently. They were definitely on a planet, but the sensors were being jammed somehow, not letting him scan more than a mile below the surface. He saw they were in the Andromeda Galaxy, on a planet orbiting a pair of nearly equally massed main sequence stars in the early adulthood of their lives, who in turn were in a nearly perfectly balanced orbit around a neutron star of decent mass, in a year that Earth accounting would put them at roughly 934,600 c.e. The planet had a perfectly Earth-like atmosphere and biosphere, and they were currently on the Northern hemisphere in the heart of the boreal belt in mid-to-late Winter. He felt his brow furrow. He knew of this system, in a vague sort of way. The same way an early 21st Century Earth person knew that Alpha Centauri existed. Both his brain and the TARDIS's records insisted that there _was_ no habitable planets in this system in _any_ era. Zanak again? No. This planet was a scosche bigger, and anyway the topography of the continents was all wrong. Another Zanak then? A 'Mark 2', perhaps?

All of the TARDIS's systems were running at half power, except life support, which was at full for the bridge and completely shut off for the entire rest of the ship. There was apparently some kind of energy field emanating from and surrounding the planet. It permeated the planet's magnetosphere, and in fact seemed to be piggy-backing on it. The TARDIS was trying to figure out how to tap into it to re-energize her systems after that bumpy jaunt, because otherwise it seemed to be interfering with her usual methods of recharging from the Universe. There was something naggingly familiar about the patterns of the wavelengths and amplitudes of the energy field. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. He sat back on the railing and rubbed at this temples.

There was a knock at the door.

The Doctor's eyes popped open and he, regrettably, whipped his head to look. Wincing slightly, and suppressing the throbbing after that, he ran to the door and flung it open. The man he saw was nearly a head taller than him, had long blondish hair blue eyes on the face of a farmer, and wore an odd mish-mash of medieval Europe and 18th Century America. The arrow on the man's bow looked lethal even at low velocity, but he was not aiming it at the Doctor, at the moment. In fact, the only thing the man was aiming at the Doctor currently was a quizzical eyebrow. The Doctor responded by leaning nonchalantly in the doorway.

"Can I help you?" he asked the man.

"I was going to ask you the same question," The man replied in a lilting voice somewhat higher than what the Doctor was expecting.

"Well, you knocked on my door."

"You crashed your box into my farm."

"Yes, well, sorry about that, got pulled a bit off course."

The man chuckled, "Ts'alright. I was planning to dig a cistern or fish pond this Spring anyhow. You just saved me a week of hard labor." A moment passed, then the man shrugged and let go of the bow string to offer his hand, "I'm Tlisen, by the way."

"The Doctor," he said, and took Tlisen's hand and shook it firmly, "Care to look inside?"

Tlisen gave the shrug of 'why not' and leaned in to look about, "Hmm, larger than most. Odd décor though."

The Doctor blinked, amused and amazed at meeting such a backwoods looking person, or indeed anyone, who didn't have the standard reaction.

"You've seen something like this before?" the Time Lord asked the farmer, managing to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

"Yeah. My sister-in-law has a cousin who's a Professional Adventurer, and their party has a tardis tent."

The Doctor nearly fell off the doorway, "Excuse me!?"

"You're excused."

"You know what TARDIS stands for?"

Tlisen's turn to blink, "I don't know from 'stands for', but tardis means anything that's bigger on the inside."

The Doctor could only stare.

Tlisen shrugged again, "Tardis tents for camping out, tardis bags for keeping supplies in, warning signs on both telling you not to put one inside the other. There's legends that the Court Magus of some ancient empire or other traveled in a teleporting stone hut no bigger than an out house on the outside, but was big as a living room on the inside. You changed rooms with a panel of buttons near the door."

The Doctor nodded at the warning label comment, remembering a time many regenerations ago when he accidentally made a fractal mobius loop by not checking if that was a regular Police Box and not another TARDIS. For the moment, he still couldn't quite get over the notion that he was in a place and time nearly a million years after he was last on Earth, with humans seemingly no more evolved than when he left there, who somehow had some vague and skewed-but-accurate memory of him. That's when the two visible stars of the system crested the tree tops visible beyond the TARDIS's landing spot, in the South-East. One was a nice golden yellow, the other one was, … _**GREEN?!**_

"Impossible," he breathed.

Tlisen followed his gaze, saw the suns, then looked back at the Doctor with an openly incredulous look, "What's impossible?"

"There's no such thing as a green star," The Doctor insisted.

Tlisen looked back at the suns, then back again at the Doctor, "You doubt your own eyes?"

The Doctor held up his finger, opened his mouth and took a breath to retort, and stopped. How often had he been on the opposite side of conversations just like this? It was a rather new experience for him. He closed his mouth and held his breath and the finger up for a moment. He then gave Tlisen a conceding look.

"Point," the Doctor said at last, and lowered his hand. "It's just that, I've been around a bit and know a few things, and based on what I know of how stars work, that," he pointed at the green star in question, "_should_ not be possible. Unless..." his sentence dangled as his thoughts raced. He ran back to the console and checked some readings, "Ah-hah! It's that energy field. It's filtering and refracting the light. Your green star _is_ the type that _would_ be green _if_ a truly green star were possible, and your planet's odd little aura makes it appear to be that color. Hah! Science."

Tlisen had moseyed about half way up the short little ramp from the door to the console, his head craning this way and that, not knowing any more about what he was seeing than anyone else who had ever done the same. Unlike most, his demeanor implied more idle curiosity than bewilderment. Someone who didn't spook easy. That would make for a nice change. Tapping a few more instruments, the TARDIS gave him a best estimate before being able to tap into or otherwise bypass that energy field; one week. At her current power levels and power settings, right now she could hop about a thousand kilometers of Space _or_ two weeks of Time, or some divided ratio of the two. After that week of hacking the field, it would then take the TARDIS another three local days, or about ninety hours, to fully charge. He eyed Tlisen for a moment, thinking of what a week and change of Winter-Time Farm Activity would do to him mentally. He'd grown up on a farm after all, back on Gallifrey, right?

...

Right.

He rapidly typed some commands in to the console. The crystals above the console flexed once, and her classic sound scraped across timespace once, putting them right outside Tlisen's barn door. He then set her on autopilot and told her to put herself in a parking geo-sync orbit directly above at 1200 kilometers on week and forty hours ago. She would then be fully charged up and thus land later that afternoon just where she'd started from. He quickly filled his pockets with his favorite accouterments, then shooed the farmer out the door. The man did to a mild double-take at no longer being at the bottom of that crater, bur recovered quickly, just in time to watch the TARDIS vanish with her usual sounds and swirl of wind.

_**THWR****R****RZHP!** Werrble-worrble-woosh. **THWR****R****RZHP!** Chirple-twertle. **THWRr**rzhp..._

The Doctor, hands in his pockets, watched her vanish then turned to look at this man's farmstead. It looked about three acres, the fields currently fallow for Winter. There were a total of two buildings, the barn and the house. Both of them A-frame and made with stacked stone walls and shale shingle roofs. It looked as though a snow door had been recently added to the upper level of the house. A classic hand pump spigot for presumably well water was not far from the front door. Parked between the barn and the house was a wood frame cart that looked like it was meant to be pulled by an animal that was rather large. Next to that was a plow with five blades and a yolk for that same large animal.

Something nudged up against the Doctor's leg just short of his knee. He looked down to find a good sized cat with thick fur in orange gray and brown tabby stripes. She was purring loudly and continued to rub the Doctor's leg. He reached down to pet her, and she met him half way, rearing up to head-butt his knuckles.

Tlisen could only stare. "If your entrance wasn't enough of a clue for me, now I _know_ you're a special one."

"She's usually not much of a people person then, ay?" the Doctor asked as he continued to pet the cat.

"Usually she prefers the dog to anyone else," Tlisen chuckled. "She just tolerates me. Heck, I've seen her kick her own kittens out at nine weeks."

The cat stopped attending to the Doctor and gave Tlisen a judgmental look, growling softly, then stalked away.

"You know she can understand most of what you say, right?" the Doctor asked the farmer.

"I didn't think about it much, but I don't doubt it." He looked up at the clear Winter sky. "You want to come in? I've got sweet chai in the kettle and salt porridge in the pot. I could fry you a rasher and egg."

Some turnings later, Tlisen was still entertaining his odd guest from afar. He'd appreciated the rashers and eggs, declined the porridge, and seemed to truly enjoy the chai. The Doctor boasted a bit about the exotic places he'd been and the Adventures he'd had. Tlisen in turn told the Doctor of some of the tales spun by his sister-in-law's cousin. He played the Doctor a few tunes on his ocarina, and then remembered what he had originally been planning to do before he was interrupted by the Doctor's arrival.

"Do you know much about distillery, Doctor?" he asked as he got out of his seat at the table and headed towards the door.

The Time Lord looked at the farmer, "A bit. Why? What are you brewing?"

To answer him, Tlisen detoured to the cooking area and opened a cabinet. Inside were eight 42oz bottles with swing tops. The glass of the bottles was clear enough, as was the liquid inside them. Tlisen picked up the open one, which was about half full still. The rest were full to a thumb below their corks and still sealed with purple wax. He opened the bottle as he returned to the table and poured two fingers into a clean teacup, and then offered the bottle to the Doctor. Instead of pouring a shot or taking a swig, the strange visitor pulled a slender device from a pocket. The device made a bizarre trilling buzz as a little blue light shined on the end pointed at the wadka bottle. After waving the device up and down the bottle a few times, the Doctor stopped. The device fell silent but the light stayed on, which the Doctor stared intently for a moment. It seemed to tell him something. Satisfied, he shut down the device and put it away, then took a thoughtful sniff of the bottle. After musing over the smell, he set the stopper back in place and put the bottle on the table.

"I rarely touch the stuff," the Doctor explained, still looking at the bottle, then smiled up at Tlisen, "but you obviously take great care in making a quality product." In the next instant, the Doctor was on his feet looking fully energized, "So! Where's this still of yours?"

They went out the the barn, opened a trap door in the floor just to the right of the door, down a flight of steps, and there it was. Tlisen went around the room lighting hurricane lamps. Soon the room was well enough lit, and the Doctor got a better look at the still. He looked impressed. He got out his device again and waved it about the still. The room was two and half men tall at the ceiling while the rig itself was a full two men by two stride, and that was just the main tank. The catch tank was just as wide but half as tall. The condenser coil array leading from one to the other looked complicated, but wasn't really.

"Not bad," the Doctor said. "Runs on, what, peat?"

"Well, yes and no," Tlisen explained, "I use wet-coke."

The Doctor just eyed him quizzically.

"Take good peat, soak it in mineral oil, it'll burn long and hot."

The Doctor just nodded, then got a fiery gleam in his eye, "Well this is all quite interesting, and your array here seems to be state of the art and in good hands. Nothing much I could do to improve it. So then, Tlisen, it has been good to meet you, but my TARDIS should be returning any moment now. I've so much time and so little to do. You sir, have your self a merry little agrarian life." He stood there for a moment longer, grinning, then bolted for the stair.

Tlisen stood there, wondering what had come over this 'Doctor', but figured he would never know. He was obviously a Magus of some kind, and some of them could certainly be eclectic and even erratic at times. His sister-in-law's cousin had a couple of Magi in his Party, one of whom regularly acknowledged that they were all to varying degrees "Lucidly Insane". After a moment, Tlisen shrugged and went upstairs himself, not to follow the Doctor, but to get some taters out of storage.

He got up to the ground floor and was about to head up to the loft for some sacks, when he saw Garth looking up at someone. He poked his head out, and saw the Doctor leaning against the corner of the barn, looking furious. His hand whipped out and he held up a single finger, which shook slightly. From there, he swiftly ran that hand through his hair a few times, then went back to brooding, arms folded, head down. Tlisen left him there and went on his previous errand. By the time he got the cauldron filled with yams and water, the fire underneath stoked, figured out what to have for lunch, and climbed the stairs to go make it, he saw that the Doctor had not moved nor had his mood improved. He made the same finger-hair routine as before. Tlisen walked back to the house and made a sandwich with mud-bean paste and berry preserves. He ate it with some more chai, then peeked outside through the shutters, and saw the Doctor was still there. He made a second sandwich, put it on a wood trencher, and brought it out. The Doctor made the finger gesture again, then noticed the sandwich. Reluctantly, after a moment, he took it.

"Of course," he said around the first bite, "Pea bee an' jay."


	2. Chapter 2

**STANDARD DISCLAIMER**

I do not own the copyrights to Doctor Who or any of the related characters, concepts, or pseudo-technologies mentioned. They are the sole property of the BBC and all incumbent writers, production companies and wot-not. The world of Thraea and all related characters, races, concepts and other intellectual property are exclusively mine, used with my own permission.

The Doctor ran up the stairs from Tlisen's distillery and into the light of day. The odd colored suns shined bright on a crisp Winter afternoon in a place that in the evening was probably pure Kinkaid, and he couldn't wait to leave. Oh that Tlisen bloke seemed likable enough, but the thought of getting dragged, kicking and screaming as it were, into rural bumpkin existence for more than a few hours set his teeth on edge. Once upon a Time, the Doctor knew how to kick his shoes off and relax for a bit, but now he felt the ever-present need to keep moving. He checked the Time in ways only a Time Lord knew how, and waited, looking expectantly at the center of the spot he'd told the TARDIS to materialize.

…

Nothing.

He looked up at the empty purple sky.

Then he heard Tlisen coming up the stairs from below. He knew he'd been rude to the man, and he did feel a bit guilty about that, but now after his brusque and hasty exit only to still be here. It chaffed. All he wanted was to get in his TARDIS and figure out what was going on with this world. He was really hoping it was nothing serious, a clerical error maybe. He knew humans eventually did make it to Andromeda and beyond. Heck, they get to Gallifreyan and Kryptonian levels of tech eventually, and beyond. By the era he'd seen on the read out, he should be meeting with such a person now, not some farmer bumpkin.

Said bumpkin now reached the top of the stairwell, and after a moment came out side. The Doctor felt that he really didn't want to talk to anyone right now, and held up a finger for silence at Tlisen. The farmer shrugged and strolled away. The sounds of farm work emanated from within the barn. After a while, Tlisen walked out again. Still wishing to avoid discussion of any kind, the Doctor signaled for further silence. The farmer, for his part, didn't even break stride as he headed back to the house. He was in there for a while, and meanwhile still no TARDIS. Eventually, Tlisen came back out. The Doctor did not look at the farmer, and so only saw in his peripheral vision that he was carrying something. When it became obvious that Tlisen was walking deliberately towards him, he signaled once again for silence. Seeming to ignore this, the man moved what he was carrying into the Doctor's full field of view. It was an old wooden plate with a sandwich on it. Two good sized slabs of hand sliced whole grain bread with something in between them. It smelled pretty good actually. It had been offered wordlessly, and wordlessly he took it. Home made farm loaf with home made peanut butter and jam.

"Of course," the Doctor said a bit sarcastically, but with no real malice in it, "P B & J."

Tlisen waited patiently for the Doctor to finish the sandwich.

"Better?" the man asked.

The Doctor made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, "Yeah, actually."

"There's a Magus in town," Tlisen said hopfully. "I wouldn't know if maybe you know each other, but she might can help you somehow."

The Doctor glared at the odd syntax.

"Anyway," the farmer continued, "We can hitch up Peludo to the ol' cart. We can be there in half a turn, maybe twenty tocks if we can convince him to trot some of the way."

The Doctor stared at him.

Tlisen sighed, "Sixty ticks in a tock, sixty tocks in a turning, thirty turnings from one midnight to the next."

The Doctor found himself stuck in a stare-blink loop for a moment, and only just managed to break it as Tlisen was taking a breath to say something more.

"Alrighty then!" the Doctor exclaimed, suddenly a whirl of activity again. "A Magus you say? What sort of "mancy" does she practice?" He made the quotes with his hands as he asked the question.

"Don't rightly know," the farmer answered as he turned to walk into the barn. "I'm not sure if she has a specialty. Mostly dabbles as far as anyone can tell, but she does have real talent. She gets consulted by the Chieftain a lot."

By this time they were at the vary large pen of a very large animal, the one the Doctor had correctly presumed pulled the cart. The beast was at least as tall as the TARDIS at the shoulders, and those shoulders were massive. It had a classic ungulate face, resembling a goat or sheep but a bit wider. It had two pairs of heavy looking horns, the inner two sweeping back while the outer curled ram-like. The coat was salt-n-pepper sable, and thick as a sheep's but straight instead of woolly. Over all, Peludo seemed underwhelmed by the Doctor. Five minutes, or 'tocks' as Tlisen would call them, and the cart was hitched to Peludo. The Doctor helped, actually using his sonic screwdriver for its true purpose for once, getting certain fasteners on the yoke and harness tightened up. The man then lead Peludo to the front door of the house, where he went inside, and emerged a few moments later in his traveling clothes. More or less the same outfit he'd greeted the Doctor in.

As the farmer was about to climb up to the driver's bench, he asked the Doctor, "You warm enough, or will you need a blanket?"

"I'm good at the moment," he asserted, "but a few extra might be wise. Always know where your towel is, I suppose."

Tlisen was in and out again quickly. He turned back to his door and put his hand on the knob, took a steadying breath, and there was a vague surge that the Doctor only just felt with his higher senses. The was a mild flash of light from within the doorknob, yellow with tinges of blue that oddly _didn't_ blend into any sort of green.

"What was that?" he asked the human.

"Just locking the door," was the reply, then as he climbed the ladder up to the driver's bench, "It's about all I'm capable of." He settled into his usual spot then beckoned to the Doctor, "C'mon up."

The Doctor was still stuck on the notion of such a bumpkin shrugging off such a psychokinetic display as everyday. Perhaps, if today's misadventure proved fruitful and he did get his TARDIS back, he would seek out this alleged court magician with the TARDIS-oid stone hut. For now though, he nudged his brain out if its loop and scampered aboard. Tlisen clicked his tongue and gave the reins a gentle whip, and they were off.

Getting to the highway, the Doctor took immediate notice. A grey granite curb, fairly universal, but the paving stones caught his attention, followed soon after by the crystal spires along the road side. He could sense a vague energy field all around. Excitedly, he climbed back down the ladder and stopped at the bottom rung. Hanging on tight he got out his sonic screwdriver and crouched low to scan the road.

"Incredible!" he exclaimed to Tlisen as he climbed back up to his seat. "Piezoelectric and photo-voltaic _and_ infrared capacitors in the lining below the cobbles. The blessed things are hard as diamond _**and**_ can bloody regenerate! Who built this thing?"

"No one rightly knows," the farmer replied. "It's ancient to be sure. Tales about it and references to go back generations. Some long forgotten empire or other. What was all that wizardly gobble-de-gook you were spewing about it?"

The Doctor stared at the man and wondered at how blazé he was about such an amazing thing, and was reminded yet again at just how much the shoe was on the other foot now. He was pretty certain that he did not like it, yet at the same time it was rather refreshing. He honestly had not felt this way since his first few years at the Time Lord Academy.

He hadn't liked the feeling then either.

"The first two terms basically mean sunlight and traffic charge those crystal posts to glow at night," he said to answer the man's questions. "The lining below the pavers take in the heat of the suns to keep the whole thing warm, at night or in the winter."

Tlisen nodded, "The Magi all said that's what it does."

The Doctor scoffed and muttered to himself, "Of course he knows all that, why did I even bother." Then in a more conversational volume, "Tell me, do you know about the electrostatic field that both keeps the road dust free and pumps excess rainwater back into the natural groundwater system?"

Tlisen was thoughtful for a moment before saying, "Didn't know about the static stuff, but it makes sense."

As promised, they were fifteen minutes on the ancient highway before signs of civilization began to appear, and another five they were in a proper tenth or eleventh century Medieval European town. More of those cododd trees lined the highway once they were in the town proper. They were obviously old, but had apparently been bound at the roots like some kind of super-sized bonsai and carefully trimmed and pruned so they appeared to be only about a decade old. They were all only ten to twelve meters tall. Grounds keepers were busy knocking the larger icicles off of the branches.

"Welcome to Shuonnackston," the farmer said with a sweeping gesture at the buildings with a genuine smile.

Soon they reached the center square of town, a three way intersection of this amazing old road and two others. Tlisen deftly guided Peludo with the reins through the light traffic to the road headed North-by-North-East. The Doctor had noticed with some interest that the ancient highway had been perfectly headed towards True North. He hadn't bothered mentioning it to Tlisen, figuring the man knew that already as well. Thirty of forty meters off the main square, Tlisen guided the cart to the curb and stopped.

"Welcome to the 'Wizard's Quarter'," the farmer said with a sweeping gesture at a single store front with a wry smile. "I've heard tales that the capitol has a whole neighborhood with over a hundred of them, just a few blocks from the Boncyff."

"Boncyff?" asked the Doctor.

"Yup," Tlisen nodded, "When the Cododdnain fell, they carved the Pennaeth Cyngorium out of her stump. Pretty much every cododd tree you see in the world are her progeny."

Something clicked in the Doctor's head, "That, was, Welsh. Latinized, but still Welsh."

Tlisen gave him a quizzical look, "Was it now?"

The Doctor returned his gaze with a mirthful grin, "It was indeed," and he began to clamor down the ladder to the street.

The wooden sign above the shop was expertly carved to depict a staff topped with a pentacle, which stood behind a chalice. A wavy kris bladed knife lay in front of the chalice. The sign hung out over the walk way, and was identical on both sides, with the exception than the athame pointed at the store on either side. The door looked to be solid oak, bound with iron, with a hexagram carved into the upper third. Pentagrams were carved into the four corners between the edges of the main circle and the edges of the door. The display windows to the left of the door had a large white marble mortar and pestle surrounded by various dried herbs, while the right side had various rough crystals and a few well made amulets. Both windows were decorated with garlands of spruce and red ribbons.

"I hope she's in," Tlisen commented as he approached the door, "it still being Solstice an all."

"Well, a Merry Yule to you," the Doctor said brightly.

"Thank you," he knocked firmly three times on the door. "The actual night was just before last, but yeah. Thank you."

They waited in silence then for a moment. Tlisen was reaching up to knock again, when the door swung open. Inside was a medium height buxom woman in indigo flannel pajamas. Her face, the Doctor guessed her to be in her mid forties, but the amount of white in her originally raven black hair made him wonder. Another thing that threw him a bit was the twin streaks of carrot red from her temples. All of this hair was tied up in a fraying bun. Her eyes and the texture of her hair, even with the red streaks, implied she had some kind of Mongoloid in her family tree, a grandparent perhaps.

"You!" she whispered, looking straight at the Doctor. "I could feel your pain from a dozen doors down."

The Doctor blinked at her, taken rather aback.

"Meistrix Maithwrach, may we please enter your mercantile?" Tlisen asked, "This man needs your help."

The woman barked a single laugh, "Ain't _**that**_ the truth, and please, call me Aido." She looked up at the top of the door frame, then down at the threshold. The Doctor followed her gaze and saw a sprig each of rosemary, rue, and juniper above, and salt filling a groove below. She then looked back at the two of them, "You may enter, know though that this invitation may be revoked at any time." She said it in a way that implied this was a habit ritual.

"I accept your terms and enter gladly," Tlisen responded. He took a step, and then stopped. Both of the locals looked at the Doctor expectantly, who looked back and forth between them for a brief moment, then caught on.

"I accept your terms and enter gladly," he said at last, smiling his best manic smile, and followed the farmer inside.

Inside it was like a tea room. The floor was the natural stone blocks of the foundation, polished, with a nine foot circular carpet showing a five earth-tone Fibonacci 'pine-cone' pattern. The walls were painted a lusty burgundy, while the mahogany wainscoting matching the ceiling molding. A single table that could seat at least six with a little elbow room was off center to the left. The right side had a glass display counter with space between it and the wall for the proprietor to get behind. The doorway into the back was off center to the right. In the space just the the left of that door was a well appointed tea setup, currently clean and empty. The woman scowled mildly at this, then disappeared into the back, emerging a moment later with her personal pot, the sugar and the cream balanced on a small plate in one hand and a candelabra the other. She set them all on the table then grabbed three cups from the set nearby and gave a 'help youself' wave and then gestured for Tlisan and the Doctor to sit.

"No crystal ball?" asked the Doctor as he sat.

The woman seemed to miss the smarm and said, "Nah. If I'm going to scry, I prefer salt water in a black granite bowl."

The Doctor quirked an eyebrow, having not expecting such a straight answer to his snark. The other eyebrow followed the first as he broke into a fresh manic grin. "How are you at it then?" he asked. He gestured at the tea pot, "Do you read the leaves?"

Aido blew a razzing scoff, "No. Let's see. With me bowl? On a good day, when the lines are right?" she pondered as she poured herself a cuppa. "Well, to date, in the forty-four years since I've set up shop, I've prevented ten homicides within five rides of here. Seven of which were assassination attempts against members of the Cyngorae. Now, with what can I actually help _you_ with?"

The Doctor's grin had fallen, but his eyebrows had gone even further up his forehead. "Gahp..." He said, then frowned as he thought of his predicament, and decided to see what the blatant truth got him. "My TARDIS has gone missing. Not for the first time, mind you. Each time is always different. 'Fool me once' and all that. You see I was pulled here by a very aggressive distress call, and when I got here I noticed your planet was both on purpose and accidentally jamming the TARDIS's sensors and her ability to recharge, respectively. The second part of that is an odd layer or three of your magnetosphere. She had just enough juice for a hop and a skip but no jump. So I sent her up a hop and back a skip with the instructions to return to me... Erm, what do you call them here again? Right! Turning. About one and a half ago. But she was a no show. So, here I am, thanks to Tlisen here."

Aido just nodded as he made each point, taking in his whole story, stirring her cup. She remained contemplatively silent as she considered his words.

"Hmmm..." she said at last. "I personally don't know much about space folding, neither I nor me Mentor. Not our thing at all, but he might know someone who knows someone who does. Describe your tent?"

"Oh it's not a tent," the Doctor told her.

"It's a box," Tlisen chimed in.

"A blue one."

"With white panels hear the top."

"And black signs with white writing above those, and a bright lamp on the very top."

"It's similar to the hut of the Imperial Magus the old tales tell of.

"But rather different, actually."

The woman's eyes grew steadily bigger with each descriptor, then she frowned when they paused, "That sounds... irritatingly familiar."

"'Irritatingly'?" asked the Doctor.

"Quite," she nodded, "because I can't place where I've heard of that before. I can assure you it's in none of _my_ library. Me Mentor's perhaps, or his Mentor's maybe. I'll have to send him a message and see what he says." She knocked back her tea, then locked eyes with the Doctor as she set the cup back down, "You sir, have Survivor's Guilt to fill an ocean, with an equal sized Hero's Remorse chaser. I'd offer to help, but I don't think we'd survive the session." She razzed another scoff, breaking eye contact to stare into the distance, "To say nothing of the town and surrounding countryside." She heaved a sigh, then closed her eyes and furrowed her brow in concentration.

The Doctor stared hard at her as she sat quietly.

Tlisen looked back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match.

Slowly, the Doctor pulled his screwdriver from a coat pocket. It made one of its many odd buzzing noises as he waved it at the woman, the blue light flickering arrhythmically. He checked the readings, and was astounded by what he found. The woman was a font of psiono-thaumatoid energy. What the Akashics called aether and the Tibetan Buddhists called chi, and most of the Europeans utterly refused to believe in or else vilified anyone capable of wielding it. Smirking, he waved the screwdriver at Tlisan, and got the reading he now expected. The other two at the table were staring at him questioningly. He pocketed the screwdriver and gestured at Tlisen with his head, "He can only lock his front door."

The woman nodded, "Fair enough. A friend of mine can light every last wick on the chandelier and wall sconces of a good sized ball room with a single snap of his fingers, and that's it."

"So!" The Doctor said after a pause. "Contacting your mentor."

"Right," the Magess agreed, standing up with her right hand ceilingward with the pointer finger out. She entered the back, and was heard muttering and shuffling for a few moments. Eventually she emerged with a dried maple leaf as big as a baseball pitcher's mitt. Tied to the stem of this was a fresh local cododd leaf and a slender shard of quartz perhaps a centimeter long. She stepped outside and stood on the pavement in front of her store with the bundle held aloft in her right hand. After a moment, the crystal flashed like a camera strobe with an indigo light, and then floated up out of her hand and away out of sight. She came back in and began pouring herself another cup of tea.

Setting the pot down, she looked apologetically at the Doctor, "I understand that you are anxious to get your tardis hut back, but he lives in the heart of Meethia."

Tlisen winced, "That's, what, sixteen rides from here?"

The Doctor blinked, "Excuse me, what is a 'ride' again?"

"As far as a horse can take a man in a day," Aido supplied.

The Doctor made some quick calculations in his mind. A really fit horse with a rider who knew what he was doing could get about fifty miles per day. This meant that the leaf had to travel perhaps eight hundred miles. He then made a strangling noise.

"I sent it on a fair wind," the woman tried to assure him, "but even so, he'll not get the message until some time this evening. Right after sun down."

The Doctor sighed, "That _is_ a pretty fair wind. Well, it's better than the Pony Express I suppose." He looked at the Wizardess and saw the apologetic puppy look she was giving him, and gave her his best manic grin, "You lot use the gold standard, or what?"

Tlisen and Aido exchanged glances.

"Only the Cyngorae use gold," Tlisen explained, "We all use copper, and sometimes silver."

"And the Cyngorae are?" queried the Doctor.

"Our governing council," Aido said, "Originally descended from the Chieftains of old, but now all the provinces vote anew every five years."

The Doctor giggled, "Brilliant."

"Why did you ask about gold?" asked Aido.

"'Cause I'm taking you lot out to dinner. Allons-y!"


End file.
